Mysterious Mose

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The Fleischer brothers felt that the greatest advantage of animation was its ability to release filmmakers from the limitations of reality. They used this theory to the 1930 Betty Boop Talkartoon titled Mysterious Mose, which was a humorous, eerie, frightening, and utterly bizarre story about a mysterious figure.

Betty Boop makes her third appearance in this cartoon.

The fact that this cartoon features two distinct Betty Boops or, more accurately, one Betty Boop produced by two separate animators with somewhat different visions for her appearance makes it an intriguing feature.

The first Betty Boop design is tall and shaped like the late, great Betty Boop from her final cartoons, with a bit longer face, smaller eyes, and a smaller skull. With meticulous attention to detail, the body is expertly depicted with a sensual, well-proportioned form.

Betty’s second design is considerably smaller in stature, has a huge spherical head with large, widely spaced eyes, and is depicted with less detail. Her second design is likewise prone to changes in her dimensions and has extremely lengthy arms. Unlike other cartoon characters, Betty Boops have their hair parted on the side instead of the middle. Additionally, the second design’s portion slides across her head when she moves, always facing the viewer.

The cartoon opens with Betty Boop sitting bolt upright in bed, whimpering, and afraid of phantom noises in the middle of the night in her bedroom. After that, she experiences a number of incredibly terrifying poltergeist incidents.

She had to hide her breasts with one arm while pulling her nightie back down with the other as it flies off multiple times. Then she looks under the covers and sees a man huddled together. She jumps out of bed and pulls back the covers, only to find no one there. The figure reappears when she pulls back the covers. At last, she prods its abdomen. With a grunt, the figure gradually loses air.

Betty Boop enters the living room with a candle and begins singing the title song as the scene shifts to her. The voice is Margie Hines, however she sounds different to how she usually sounds.

There’s a man of mystery that’s roaming through the land,
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oooh!
Far and near you hear of him; he’s found on every hand;
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oooh!
Every city, town and village knows of him by now,
There’s a way to recognize him; let me tell you how:

When your path at midnight dark by a graveyard goes,
And someone whistles, “Whoooooo!”
That’s Mysterious Mose!

On some dark and stormy night, while the tempest blows,
If someone whistles, “Whooooo!”
That’s Mysterious Mose!

He sees all, he knows all; he’s just been everywhere;
Some night, he might wait for you upon the stair!

So when you’re going down the cellar, walk upon your toes,
And if someone whistles, “Whooooo!”
That’s Mysterious Mose!

Everybody’s talking of me everywhere you go,
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooh!

Who I am or what I am nobody seems to know;
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooh!

In the mountains, at the seashore, anywhere at all,
Anytime of day or night you’ll have to hear me call.

In the two lines above, Mose adopts a new persona for each phrase.

Mose and Betty watch a succession of bizarre animals emerge and change into the next animal, each playing a different musical instrument, for the duration of the cartoon while lounging on the couch. The fish pile up and transform into a saxophone-playing caterpillar; the mouse has a flute, and the monkey has a bugle from which fish emerge. At the end, each animal plays a solo on an instrument and sings “That’s Mysterious Mose.”

When the last of the creatures vanish, Mose pulls out a tuba and starts to play, following the tuba as it wiggles. Towards the end, the chorus sings “That’s Mysterious Mose!” as the tuba contracts into Mose’s mouth and the music grows more frenetic until Mose explodes into a pile of broken clockwork.